Saturday, June 02, 2012

My wonderful husband just called me from the Ray Township recycling center. Someone was "recycling" several cases of Mason jars with rings. He wanted to know if I could "reuse" them instead of "recycling" them. No hesitation here!

We have planted a lot of peas, beans, corn, sunflowers, peppers,pumpkins, and still have a lot left to plant. I haven't put any zucchini or yellow squash out yet. We will have lots of use for canning jars. We are always running into issues with plastic containers not matching the lids to the container, but with canning jars, it is never a problem, there are only two sizes, and Lehmans carries plastic lids for both.

Last week we were at the farm on vacation. We visited the township offices to discuss the change from "agricultural" status to "residential" status. The township supervisor came out of his office and wanted to know if we were the people who were fighting about the bees.

I told him we were NOT fighting. The neighbors are fighting. We are accomodating them by moving the bees to another location on our farm. (Even though they want us to give up the bees altogether.) He mentioned that he did not think the "bee situation" was covered by the Michigan Right to Farm act. I told him I believed absolutely it was. He said, well maybe, a couple of hives, but not a commercial apiarist ---again, I told him absolutely it was. The document for 2012 Generally Accepted agricultural management principles specifically mentions acreage requirements and number of hives. Hopefully he will look into it on his own. I would rather not embarrass him by correcting him. As he said, it is not his jurisdiction, if they want to take us to court, let them. We will prevail, as the law and justice are on our side. Hopefully we can have our legal fees assigned to them.

My grandson Aiden was with us this week and helped us pick rocks out of the field as well as planting the bean seeds, pumplin seeds, and sunflower seeds. He is a great kid and did not complain about the hard work, he acted like it was fun for him. I love him so much!

MSU Extension Emergency Management Updates

Geek.Farm.Life Podcast

Twitter Updates

Twitter Updates

Subscribe To Bright Meadow Farms!

About Me

I'm a retired information technology (IT) specialist who worked in automotive manufacturing, production scheduling, materials management, and inventory control. For over 40 years, I have also been pursuing the hobbies of machine knitting and machine embroidery, along with more traditional fiber arts such as spinning, dyeing, weaving, quilting and sewing. I love working with natural fibers like wool, alpaca, angora, and mohair. But I also love the enhanced productivity I can get using modern software and hardware tools to ply my craft.

I prefer to use natural plant-based dyes and sometimes gather my dyestuff from my organic garden or the meadow behind our home.

I am available to teach hand or machine knitting.

I live with the love of my life, my husband. I never knew how to bake a pie until I met him. Now we raise apple trees and honey bees! I love my daughters, four grandchildren and also my step family, kids, grandkids and GREAT-grandkids!